


you’re the devil’s child

by heartofsilverseas



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies), Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isle of the Lost (Disney), Isle of the Lost (Disney) is a Terrible Place, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26876149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofsilverseas/pseuds/heartofsilverseas
Summary: Once upon a time, in a land not so far away from all the princes and princesses, there was an isle, filled with the worst of the worst people in the nation.The Isle of the Lost, was what it was called, and there, two powerful creatures met in shadowed alleyways—a defeated Fae and an outcasted god, both lonely and dark. They had flings here and there, resulting in the product of three very powerful children.The eldest, Mal. The middle, Bianca. The youngest, Nico. And with their bloodline, half-Fae, half-god, all powerful, they rule the Isle together. This is their story.
Relationships: Bianca di Angelo & Hades, Bianca di Angelo & Mal (Disney), Bianca di Angelo & Maria di Angelo, Bianca di Angelo & Nico di Angelo, Hades & Mal (Disney), Hades/Maleficent (Disney), Mal (Disney) & Maria di Angelo, Mal (Disney) & Nico di Angelo, Maria di Angelo & Nico di Angelo, Maria di Angelo/Hades, Nico di Angelo & Hades
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	you’re the devil’s child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal hasn’t received love in a long, _long_ time.

On December 31, 1927, Mal is born with an abusive and villainous woman as her mother and a father that couldn't be bothered to stick around. Like all the other kids on the Isle, once she could walk and talk, she is dumped on the streets to fend for herself and to do her mother's bidding.

So she does, and life goes on. Some new villains come in, some die, some laze around while others work their kids to death. Mal quickly learns, through bruises and half-mad rants, that in order to not be among those who died, you'd have to keep your eyes down, chest up, fists raised, body taut, and do whatever it takes to survive.

The strategy works out just fine, until Bianca, the little sister she never knew she had, is literally dumped in her arms. For a few nights, Mal thinks that her one-year-old sister might die, before she really _truly_ lives, and Mal can't (can't be like her mother, who kills and kills and lets people around her fall and die and suffer until there is no one left-) let that happen. She isn't her mother. (She's _not_ , no matter what everyone on the Isle thinks.) So she learns to dig scraps for not just one person, but two, and to shush her sister's cries at night, and to burp her and change her piss-soaked clothes.

And like before, it works out fine, until _another_ sibling is thrown at her. ("Seriously, Mother? How many times do you _fuck_ with this guy?") But she knows the drill, and fights for all three of them, her little brother and sister, with dark eyes and pale skin and silky hair and the smallest hands she's ever seen. And it's okay.

Then, on Nico's third birthday, her father visits from whatever pile of rocks he was hiding under, and suddenly, everything is definitely _not_ okay.

Her father is mad, is the first thing Mal notices. Not hot, green fire mad like Mother, or clenched fists mad like most of the people on the streets, but a silent, seething fury that reminds Mal of a shaking glacier before it slowly and painfully destroys everything in its path.

It takes a second for her to realise that he isn't mad at her, but at her _mother_ , and now that's a thought that freezes her in her tracks. "Come on," he commands, shoving what little belongings they owned into a single duffel bag. "We must go." When he's done, he grips both her and Bianca's wrist in one hand and Nico's in another, then jumps into the shadows.

When they pop back out, she feels faint and Nico starts bawling, with Bianca nearly following suit. Mal glares at her father.

Father is shouting at another woman in the kitchen while Mal and her siblings silently wait in the living room. She can't really make out what they're saying, the door and walls muffling the words, but she knows what an argument sounds like. 

Father opens the door, approaches them, crouches down in front of her so that she could look him in the eye without craning her neck and explains what's going to happen to them. Apparently, they are to live with Maria di Angelo, an Italian woman—the same one he was fighting with. 

He doesn't explain why, or where the fuck he's been all these years, but she doesn't ask anyways, too entranced by a woman with the most beautiful eyes Mal's ever seen entering the room. "I'm Maria," the woman says, slightly rolling the _r._

"Mal," she replies. On her lap, Nico wiggles and chews on purple strands of her hair. Bianca farts and giggles.

"Hello, Mal," she says kindly, ignoring the events happening on Mal's lap. "How old are you?" 

Mal counts in her head. "Eight." She says at last. "I think."

"Eight," she breathes. "And you were already living on the streets? Taking care of your brother and sister?"

"Yes," Mal narrows her eyes. "Do you have a problem with that?" 

Maria purses her lips, but shakes her head. _Liar,_ Mal thinks, but is too preoccupied with trying to untangle her hair to point it out.

The first few days are awkward, to say the least. Mal is skittish around Maria, and Maria seems to think that Mal is a baby that can't do _anything_ by herself. Multiple times now, the woman has offered to take care of Nico and Bianca. Mal scoffs at the mere thought of it. Let a total stranger take care of her siblings? Never.

But then Maria woos them by having never-ending patience when teaching them all how to read and write (Mal can only spell her name and the word 'bitch', and could probably write them too, but not without struggle. Apparently, all three of them suffer from dyslexia, from her father's side. Thanks a lot, Father.) in both English and Italian, by baking cookies with Bianca, by encouraging Nico's pirate obsession, by giving Mal a notepad-sized sketchbook and a pen, along with a tentative smile and an offer of friendship that she accepts.

And slowly, they all start to love Maria, with the way she twirls through the living room and sprinkles brown sugar on their oatmeal and trims their nails while they colour and reads them bedtime stories and sings soft Italian lullabies and combs her own hair with her fingers but insists on brushing theirs with a hairbrush and cheers at the radio announcements they can only understand bits and pieces of. They all start to love her curly hair and almost-invisible freckles and olive skin and sharp jawline and the curve of her nose and the umber eyes Mal was in awe with oh-so-long ago.

(And though they'll never admit it, they love the way endearments roll off her tongue like a second language. Mal, so used to being called _bitch_ or _little girl,_ takes a long while to respond to the name _patatina,_ but once she does, she listens to it with a smile playing on her lips. Bianca becomes _bambolina_ and Nico _passerotto_. "My little sparrow," Maria explains when Nico asks what it means. "Always chirping and chirping." Bianca sniggers and her brother elbows her in the side, but he's blushing, and that ruins the effect.)

Mal hasn't received love in a long, _long_ time. Between her mother's obsession with evilness, the fact that she doesn't even know her father's name, and that she's spent seven years of her life trapped inside a hellhole where the general vibe was _fend for yourself,_ only _yourself, or die,_ there wasn't much time or effort put in to love her. The only affection she's received on the Isle was probably when Bianca presses rocks shiny from the rain in her hands and Nico's happy babbles whenever he saw her.

But now, surrounded by her family on her ninth birthday, Nico hitting a balloon repetitively in the air, Bianca trying to discreetly blow the candles out from the side of her mouth, Maria snapping away pictures with a Kodak Retina, she can _feel_ love cover her like a blanket, enveloping her body and filling her insides with a gooey warmth.

A few months later, when Maria is done turning off the lights and closing the bedroom door, Mal hears a whisper from her place on the spare mattress on the floor. For a moment, she thinks that it's a murmur from either Nico or Bianca in the bunk bed next to her mattress on the floor, a snippet of dialogue from a particularly vivid dream they're having. 

But the whisper grows stronger, and louder, until she could make out the words, _your Highness, your Highness, your Highness_ , in a voice that is definitely _not_ from either of her siblings. Her eyes are wide as she stumbles out of the room, careful not to wake her siblings. "Maria?" She calls out, once the door is safely shut and it is just her and the hallway. Maria emerges from the kitchen, a steaming cup of orzo nestled in her hands.

"Yes, Mal?" Maria replies.

"...I think there are voices in my room." Mal says at last. 

Maria's brows furrow. "Can you see them, _patatina_?" There's something in the woman's expression, like she knows _exactly_ what's going on, but is desperately hoping that it's not. Mal is instantly suspicious.

"What do you know?" She demands. "What are you hiding from me?" 

Maria's expression softens. "I'll explain later—but you have to tell me everything that happened."

Once Mal has tells everything from start to finish, Maria looks like she's aged a couple of years. "I think your father would explain this better." She says, then mutters words under her breath like a prayer.

A few moments later, Father pops out of the shadows on the corner of the kitchen. "Walk with me, Mal." He says, striding out of the back door. Mal obediently follows. She closed the door behind them, breathing in the Croatian night air. Father is waiting for her in the alley next to their house, half clouded in the shadows he's so fond of. "Do you ever wonder how I travel through shadows?" 

"No? The Isle had stranger people." She cocks her head. "Should I have?"

Father sighs. "It doesn't matter. What does is the fact that-" He cuts himself off, and sighs again. He then crouches down so that his face is in front of hers. "Mal. I am a god."

"Oh," She wonders. "Is that why I can hear whispers?"

"Whispers?" Her father echoes. "Oh." He says a moment later. " _Oh._ "

"What 'oh'?" Mal demands.

"Oh, as in you can shadow talk." He says. "A very, very, rare ability. Only two others have ever been able to do so."

"Can I do anything else?" She asks, because talking to shadows might be pretty useful later on, but not now, when all they whisper is _your Highness._ If her father is a god, then there must be at least another power, right? There has to be. How can she protect Nico and Bianca when her power is useless? How can she protect them from the absolutely horrid, terrible, fucking awful people out there that put out their cigarettes on whatever surface they find, the skin of their spawn included and use throats as glass garbage disposals and bodies as punching bags andand _and_ -

"Yes," Father answers, dispelling the rising cacophony of terror-filled questions in her head. "But it is late, daughter. Go to sleep. I will explain more in the morning." He stands up and strides to the nearest looming shadow.

"Wait!" Mal calls out. Her father freezes, one foot already disappearing in the shadows. "What's your name?"

He replies, "Hades." Then he dissolves into the darkness, leaving her in the alley, alone with nothing but the whispering shadows as company.

Father does indeed explain everything the next morning, and once again, both her and her siblings' worlds turn upside down. Her father is a Greek god, one of the oldest and most powerful, in fact, but Mal isn't as surprised as she should be. It's no secret that her mother would only ever settle for the best— _of course_ she would manage to fuck a god in an isle filled with useless villains and goons.

Nico is firing rapid questions at their father, with Bianca listening attentively. "Do I have powers?" He demands. 

"Yes, all of my children do." Hades replies. He sounds so fucking _done_ with her siblings that Mal can't help but smirk at it. Finally, have someone else be on the receiving end of Nico's questions for once.

"I wanna change into animals! Like Sheena the jungle lady!" Bianca says excitedly.

"That is not how that works..."

Mal tunes them out, content to focus on the shadows. _Your Highness, your Highness, your Highness,_ They whisper. Mal has no idea why They has a capital 'T', or why it's a 'they' and not a 'he' or 'she' or something else, but it just _does_ , and anything else seems _wrong_.

"Hi," she murmurs, and can feel Their surprise at her acknowledgement.

 _Hi, hi, hi,_ They echo. _Highness hear us, us?_ Mal wonders why They bothered talking to her if They weren't sure she could hear Them at all. 

"Yeah, loud and clear." She replies.

 _Yes, yes,_ They say excitedly. _Shadow-talker, talker. Long time, time._

"It's been a long time since you've met a shadow talker?" Mal guesses. She can feel their nods.

 _Long, long,_ They confirm. For shadows that probably live forever and might not have a keen sense of time, she wonders how long 'long' is.

"Are you talking to Them?" Father settles on the seat next to her. 

Mal looks at him in surprise. "You can't hear Them? I thought I got this power from you."

"You did," He replies. "But each shadow talker is specifically tuned to Them, which means that you understand Them and They understand you, while I just have the ability to control Them. Essentially, I am not a shadow talker, just the god that controls Them."

"Oh," She says softly. They sit in silence after that.

"One day," he says lowly, after a moment, glancing at Bianca and Nico, who, along with Maria, are listening closely to the radio. Mal follows his gaze. "Your brother and sister's powers will develop, like you. And Zeus, my brother, will try to find and kill you all." 

She flinches at the blunt statement, then stares at him, questioning. He sighs. "My brother is scared of you and your siblings, along with the powers you have, and will stop at nothing to eliminate you all."

"Is that why we moved to Split?" She questions. A year and a half after they moved in with Maria in Venice, Hades had stormed into the house and ushered a half-asleep Maria into another room to talk. A few days later, they boarded a flight to Split, Croatia. And never came back.

"Yes," he says honestly. 

"Will we always be running?" She asks. Father says nothing, but Mal already knows the answer.

For the next few months, Mal has taken to practising her powers as much as possible. She introduces her siblings to her shadows—both parties being absolutely delighted with the concept of having something new and exciting to play with—, manages to cover her whole arm with shadows, and introduces more vocabulary to Them, all while juggling homeschooling and chores, which Mal thinks is pretty damn awesome of her.

She discovers she has other powers too, like Father had said, back in the alley. A buzz in her ears whenever someone nearby dies, an ability to travel through the shadows, just like her father, although the farthest she's been able to go was the living room to the fire escape. And probably the most dangerous one, the ability to make small tremors in the ground whenever she's mad. 

She discovers this when Bianca and Nico stumble into the house with bruised cheeks and bloody hands. A couple of kids from the neighbourhood, ones who's parents have grudges again Americans and their place in the war, heard their Auradonian accents and mistook it as American, leading to them beating up her siblings in an alley behind a diner.

When she learns of this, Mal grips the teacup in her hands so tightly her knuckles turn white. A hot, numb feeling washes her from head to toe, a feeling she's never felt before. A distant part of her mind recognises it as rage, pure, mind-numbing rage, but she's too angry to care. The world crashes, her thoughts and vocabulary fleeing until there is nothing else except _someone hurt mine? Die._

She's only jolted out of it when the orzo in her teacup splashed violently on her hand before she drops it, and it violently breaks as it hits the floor, pieces scattering on the kitchen tile. Like a dam breaking, her senses flow back into her, and she can start to hear something other than the _thump-thump_ of her heartbeat and see something other than a blood-red haze.

Maria, Bianca, and Nico are all under the kitchen table, curled up, arms wrapped to protect their heads like they're bracing for an earthquake. In fact, the whole house looks like it has survived an earthquake. Picture frames are fallen from their place on the mantelpiece, books in a rough pile on top of each other, most glass is broken or cracked.

"Oh my gods," she whispers, and the shadows try and reach out to comfort her, although Their efforts are in vain. "Oh my _gods._ "

So that happens. She's pretty shaken and withdrawn for the next few weeks but, with the combined efforts of her siblings and mother figure, manages to bounce back to her normal personality, albeit with a slightly tighter grip on her anger. Or at least, that what she hopes she could be like. 

But in reality, she slips. Sometimes, she hears a man catcall Maria or a woman hitting a dog or soldiers with green uniforms and red flags march through the city as if they own it and she just- just _slips_ and breaks a vase or shatters the windows or makes the metal frame creak or something as familiar rage tingles in her body.

Then suddenly, Bianca is there, innocent eyes turning sombre, a calm, anchoring hand on her arm and a warm presence hugging her body. Or Nico, who talks and talks and talks about nothing and everything all at once, gossip and news and statistics weaving into his words like the intricate braids he likes to tie her long hair into. Or Maria, a plate of chocolate chip cookies in one hand and a warm glass of milk and honey in another, lips ready to spill lullabies in her native tongue that Mal only understands every other word of. Or even Father, appearing from the darkness, no talk, no touch, but a reassuring presence in the room nonetheless as he carefully takes control of her tremors.

And everything is okay.

Mal jinxes it. She _fucking_ jinxes it. The first time she said it was okay, she got a sibling, then another to take care of (even though in the end, it was possibly the best thing her mother has ever done for her). The second time, they get shipped off to Italy under the orders of her former-absentee father. And now, the apartment is shaking and shaking and _shaking,_ with glass breaking and people screaming like a crescendoing orchestra, swelling and swelling the music until it physically _can't_ anymore.

Maria's mouth moves, face set, and while Mal can't hear her, she can read the very clear mouthing of 'calm down'. She furiously shakes her head. If this earthquake was hers, she wouldn't be capable of much thinking, just the hot rage and numbness it brings. But now, she feels none of that, just terrifying, heart-stopping fear for everyone she loves. "It's not me—it's Bianca!" She shouts, gesturing to her sister that is still standing in the middle of the living room, walls collapsing all around her. 

In fact, everything is collapsing and if it's not, it's cracking or breaking or shattering or flying or hanging by the very edges of its fundamental being. _This is it,_ Mal thinks mutely, as a picture frame cuts the edge of her cheek, _This is how we go._

But then Father pops out of nowhere, grabbing them all and rescuing them, just like how he rescued them from the clutches of Maleficent. Mal stumbles out of the shadows, the echo of _highness, highness, highness_ ringing in her ears, and into an alley completely different to any she's ever seen, _including_ the Isle. "Where are we, Father?" She asks after she gets over the vertigo and nausea that comes in a package deal with shadow travel.

"Somewhere, far, far away." He replies, but he doesn't answer her question.

America. They're in fucking _America_. Some place called Washington, D.C., if the frantic muttering of lost tourists is anything to go by. And, by gods, the Auradonian in her blood is thrumming to go roast America to oblivion.

Mal might have been locked up in an isle for the first seven years of her life, and in Europe for three, but even _she's_ heard of the rivalry between the United States of America and the United States of Auradon. They were some of the many countries to be 'found' by the British in its quest for gold, glory, and spreading the word of God (hah, and now she has proof that's fake. Just ask any scientist willing to study her blood). Later on, though, they rebelled in the famous American-Auradonian Revolution, creating a brotherly bond between the two nations.

So what happened to make them fall from brothers to rivals? Nothing, really. The two just gradually drifted apart, like a pair of high school sweethearts that never really worked after graduation. America was a democracy but Auradon was a monarchy. America preferred to have trials and rules on what was acceptable to do while Auradon liked social taboos and throwing villains into rotten islands without so much as a second glance. America had science while Auradon had magic. You know, the little things.

But she had more important things to think about. Like Bianca. Right. Her sister is shaking, hands trembling and head cast down, refusing to look at any of them in the eye. "Hey, hey," Mal reassures. "Bianca, look at me. Hey. Look at me." Bianca slowly raises her head, but avoids eye contact, so Mal grabs her chin firmly until her sister has no choice but to stare at her bottle-green eyes. "Sis, I don't know what you're thinking right now, but this isn't your fault."

A whimper left Bianca's lips, and Mal had to press her lips together to avoid the instinctual _whimpering is for pussies_ to slip out. Bianca doesn't need Mal, daughter of Maleficent and Hades, raised on the Isle right now. She needs Mal, sister of Nico and Bianca, maybe-daughter of Maria. "Like if you wanna blame anyone, blame Hades," Mal rambles. "He's the one that gave us these shit powers, right?" She's trying to do the Nico effect and talk and talk and talk until her sister calms down, and her brother would probably be _way_ better at this and she probably would've made him do it instead if it wasn't for the fact that Nico was still a little freaked out by Bianca's power show, and _nowhere_ near able to deal with said sister. So up to Mal it is. Like always.

Bianca sniffles. "Not- not shit powers."

"Not shit powers?" Mal echoes. "But...they make us sense when someone dies near us. That's a pretty shitty thing to feel."

"They gave us your shadows who are my," She hiccups. "My best friends." She argues. Nico nods in agreement, although he still looks a little shaken.

Mal grins. "Okay, well if they aren't shit powers, then you aren't a shit person for using them, _sorellina._ "

"I destroyed our home," Bianca's eyes tear up with the reminder. "And probably half of-" She hiccups again. "Of Split too, which means Zeus is gonna- gonna come find us and we'll have to stay in- in America forever!" She stares straight into Mal's eyes, and Mal feels a little piece of her rotten soul chip away. "Which makes me a- a bitch!" Her sister exclaims.

Mal inhales a sharp breath. The memory of, "You bitch! Fucking fake-Fae! Get out of my house before I make you!" comes to mind, but she pushes it down, down, _down_ in the depths of her head. "Never say that again," Mal says sharply, deadly, her voice a quiet kind of rage. Like her father, she remembers, before he rescued them from Mother. "Never ever _fucking_ say that again."

Bianca doesn't, realising she's crossed some sort of line she never even knew was there. In fact, she doesn't call herself, or any other person, no matter how much she hates them, a bitch for the rest of her life. But that doesn't stop her sister from calling herself other names too, later on, although that slowly decreases and eventually stops after Hades proposes training.

Training is exactly what it sounds like. Right after homeschooling is done, they would spend four hours, five on weekends and holidays, to train and hone their skills to the best of their ability. Or, at least, that's what their father explains to them.

Hades is in charge of training their powers, because of _course_ he is. He helps Mal shadow travel further than a couple of feet at a time and shape Them into different shapes according to her will and to release her tremors in small, controlled movements. "It's like a boiling pot," He explains as she explodes yet another teacup. "You have to release the steam, otherwise the whole thing will blow." So she goes through chia cups and picture frames and glass jars an hour a day like toilet paper, but at least she doesn't shake the house down, and, more importantly, not let Zeus know where they are. It's a plus in her book.

Bianca is both easier and harder to train, Mal thinks. She's shaken by the quake of '37, as everyone has taken to calling it, so she's simultaneously terrified and eager to control her powers. It's too risky to practice her powers yet, so they work through her mental blocks first. Hades is particularly awful at the whole feelings thing, not that Mal has much place to talk, so her father summons a dead therapist and Maria, shoves them at Bianca for thirty minutes a day, and hopes for the best.

While Bianca's earthquake powers are still a ticking bomb waiting to explode, she takes to her other powers like a duck to water. She can force ghosts to shut up just by putting a finger to her lips, and abuses this power immensely during her sessions with the dead therapist. Mal only wishes that she could use it on living people too, so her sister could shut up the screaming couple in the floor above their hotel room and let everyone have a couple of hours of decent sleep.

Nico has yet to develop his powers yet, so his power training lessons are the quickest. Mostly, Hades just summons ghosts to tell stories about their life to Nico and passes that as training.

Maria was already in charge of their homeschooling, so it doesn't take much to give them an hour of brain activities. Mal hates those the most. An hour of staring at brain teasers and puzzles, letters and numbers having a fucking party across the page? No thank you, but apparently, it's supposed to help exercise your brain or some other bullshit she doesn't want to think about, so brain activities are a go. Unfortunately. One day or another, Mal is going to find whatever soul invented these and toss them into the Fields of Punishment, if they aren't already there.

Her siblings have similar thoughts (as if someone could actually like brain teasers) so both Maria and their father has taken to bribing them with chocolate torrone and raspberry jam bomboloni. It works. Most of the time.

And last but not least, physical training. If Hades wants them to learn fancy-schmancy sword skills, with all of their rules and do's and dont's and 'acceptable' tactics, he brings a couple of Greek or Roman soldiers from the dead, with a smattering of other cultures' warriors too to teach them. If he doesn't...well, that's when Mal comes in.

Mal is the coach of dirty training lessons, and Coach Mal is "fucking mean", according to the words of her sister, and Mal can't exactly blame her. She channels her inner villain during training, rarely using it anywhere else, and pushes her siblings to their absolute limits over and over and over again, not caring if they like it or not. 

She teaches them how to fight cornered and with their backs against the wall against multiple enemies, by summoning a bunch of skeletons and making them fight her siblings in various situations. She teaches them to know when to fight and when to flee ("But never freeze, don't you _fucking_ freeze or you'll be _dead._ "), teaches them how to know who'll fight by their side and who'll stab them in the back with a single glance—teaches them all the dirty shit from the Isle that Hades' army of undead soldiers never will.

At the end of the day, it's safe to say that Nico and Bianca hate her, spitting insults left and right (as if Mal has never heard them a thousand times before) and silent treatments that stretch on and on and _on_ , but her training comes in handy with whatever back alley scraps her siblings get into, and they slowly forgive her through offered pignoli cookies and trashy junk food from convenience stores.

Her siblings are growing up. Mal knows this, can see it in the way Nico's face is getting rid of baby fat and the outline of abs on Bianca's stomach (Mal could have had a six-pack too, at Bianca's age, instead of a flimsy excuse of ab muscles, if it wasn't for her years of malnutrition. Another thing on the list the Isle has done to her.)

But it's not just their appearance—they've been growing up inside too. And in risk of sounding like a prissy Auradonian, Mal knows that her siblings are growing up _good._ Sure, they cuss more than any of the kids in the local school combined, but they were raised by a former Isle resident for most of their life, so what do you expect? And okay, they pick fights and steal and rough up kids and yeah- she gets it. They're not perfect; no more than Mal at their age, at least.

In fact, they're better than who she was, back on the Isle. Nico shows the kid, with one arm and lives on the pave walk next to their hotel lobby, his plastic pirate hook or game card statistics or whatever recent phase he's going through, and Bianca donates the products of a midnight baking spree to the local shelter. By now she's on a first name basis with all of the staff members and their brother, even though they've been living in Washington, D.C. for less than a month now.

And Mal knows it's too soon, but she can't help but think about if they could settle down here. They could live in a shabby apartment that Hades would heavily disapprove of, and Mal would tell him to fuck off every time he would mention buying them a mansion. They could run around in National Park, pickpocketing unknowing victims in the subway and buying hot dogs with the money they've stolen. She might even let Maria enrol them all in the local public school, and they would be outsiders but still content. Happy.

They could settle down, have a life here, where Zeus wouldn't be able to find them.

And that's where Mal goes wrong. Very, _very,_ wrong.

There's something _wrong_ today, and Mal can't explain the feeling. Her nerves thrum within her bones and she flinches at things she thought she got over months ago. She's taken to raking her thighs with her fingernails, and Maria gives her a concerned look. "Are you okay, _patatina_?" She asks softly.

"No," Mal whispers, as the shadows on the walls reach out and try to comfort her. "No, something is _wrong_ today." 

The shadows agree with her. _Wrong, wrong, wrong,_ they nod. Maria's eyes flicker at the teapot that has begun to form cracks. "I'll go call your father," She says, and flees the room. Once she leaves, Mal exhales and releases the grip on her powers. The teapot proceeds to burst into tiny little ceramic shards.

Father gracefully glides into the room, but pauses once he sees the state his daughter is in. "Mal? What's wrong?" She shakes her head.

"Danger," she whispers. " _Danger._ " It hurts, speaking, like the world is thrumming and buzzing and there are earthquakes tumbling out of her mouth. The small flashes of pain she feels from the scratches on her thighs are probably the only thing that's keeping her from exploding this place sky high.

His eyes harden. "Maria! Bianca! Nico!" They all rush into the room.

Maria looks frazzled. " _Mio caro,_ do we need to go?" Hades glances at Mal, still shivering and scratching her thighs, and nods. Maria purses her lips, but heads towards the doorway, presumably about to pack the bags they had _just_ only finished sorting through a couple of days ago.

The electricity in the air is all the warning they have, like the crackle-pop of sparks prior to a bomb exploding, before lights are flashing everywhere, debris flying not unlike when Bianca levelled their apartment back in Split, and Mal lets out a scream, one that has been bubbling deep in her throat and under her skin since she woke up that morning, and all glass and ceramics explode into the high heavens. The shadows are yelling, a chorus of _danger, danger, danger!_ , but not as loud as Hades, who screams a " _Maria!_ " so loud that it must have shaken the earth.

It all happens so fast—firecrackers in the air turn into a blazing hot flash of light, burning itself into the back of Mal's eyelids before a wall of sheer blackness throws itself between the children of Hades and the lightning. 

But not Maria. Father is too slow to save her, too shocked and too stunned by the sudden appearance of Zeus' lightning to do anything but throw up that instinctive wall of shadow to protect her and her siblings. And Mal would blame him like the darker part of her mind would want, if it weren't for the fact that she was still reeling from- from _everything._

She _screams_. She screams at Nico, Bianca, her father for not saving Maria and Maria for dying, for leaving her alone in the world just when she thought that they could be a family. She screams until her throat is hoarse and her eyes are stinging and the lightning is gone until all that is left are echoes of what once was.

Maria is there. Maria is _right there,_ eyes open, blank, and face charred black, skin crackling with leftover lightning, and Mal knows that she is dead. Knows it the way she knows the smell of lasagne in the oven and chocolate on her tongue and the creak of the floorboard right before someone entered the kitchen in their old apartment. Dead, she thinks, as air is stolen from her lungs, grasping her throat and ribs until everything feels too tight, too restricting. Deaddeaddeaddead _dead-_

And then they are enveloped by darkness, shadows whispering reassuring words in her ear. Her father shadow travels them to a place where the air is hot and thick like the Isle in a heatwave, even though she knows it's only May, and the entire world is in various shades of red and black and bronze. It's nothing like she's ever seen before, not in all of her years and all of the places she's been. Her shortage of breath forgotten, she widens her eyes and opens her mouth, but Nico beats her to the punch. "Where are we, Father?" He inquires.

"The Underworld," Father says, and Mal has no idea how he is so calm. So collected. Didn't he love Maria? Mal thinks so, but maybe she's mistaken. Love is a foreign concept, something she can only grasp at whenever she spends hours and hours with her siblings, and even then it leaves her floundering. 

Hades and Maria had their fights, their shouting matches ending with slamming doors and silent treatments, but Hades has always been there—in the shadows, behind a wall, the imposing figure looming in the doorway, and wasn't love all about showing up? Mal thinks she heard that from Maria before, although she can't really recall. It's probably true though, since none of the Isle parents ever bothered showing up for shit.

Then Mal remembers the first time she met Father, seven years old and still under the thumb of her mother, and how he was cold, cold, _cold_ furious. Like a glacier, she remembers, and wonders if he's coping with Maria's death the same way.

Under the cover of silk sheets that feels too smooth on her skin, her siblings snuggle in her side, even though she tries desperately to make them stop. "It happened so fast—what actually happened today?" Bianca whispers in her hair.

"Zeus found us," is what slips out, and Mal feels familiar rage bubble in her skin. "Zeus found us and he tried to kill us but killed Maria instead."

There is silence, then, "Oh," Nico whispers. "So it was an accident?"

"No," She laughs, cruel and hard. They flinch. "No, _fratellino,_ Zeus would do it all over again if he had to, and the only fucking thing he would change would be who got hit by the lightning bolt."

"I hate Zeus," Bianca says, firm, sure, and like a promise. "I hate Zeus so fucking much."

"Don't we all," Mal replies, as her siblings squash themselves against her body. They fall asleep soon after that.


End file.
